


Witches of Niima

by Scoby



Series: Reylo experiments [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Female Ejaculation, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Lightning, Force Skype on a swamp, Graphic Depiction of Abortion, Grey Jedi, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/referenced underage rape, Kylo Ren Redemption, Lapland, Major Character Death and Rebirth, Masturbation, Minor BB-8, Minor Force Ghost Leia Organa, Oral Sex, Partial Role Reversal, Pre-Canon of Sorts, Redeemed Ben Solo, Reindeer, Religion, Shamanism, Vaginal Sex, Violence, Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Rey (Star Wars), Virgin but well educated Rey, Witch Hunter Kylo Ren, Witch Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:35:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24906187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: Kylo Ren returns to Niima, where he grew up, for an assignment from the church to capture all who are suspected for witchcraft. But prosecuting the most powerful witch Rey turns out to be a task that ends up blurring dark and light in his mind.-----“What are you afraid of? Just take my hand and we’ll finish this together. Rey, I… I really want you by my side.”“There’s something else I’d rather take.”“What is it?”“Ben’s hand.”“Ben Solo’s? Really? But… I don’t understand… What do you see inhim? He was weak, full of dark powers he didn’t even try to hold back. That's why I destroyed him.”
Relationships: Rey & Paige Tico & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo experiments [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872295
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: manual (=oral) castration of reindeer happens in the first chapter

Rey had waited for four full days by Jakku river when they finally arrived. She had run out of her rations in two days and since then had nothing but the water from the river and angelica leaves. But she forgot about the rumbling of her stomach when she saw them: a young male and an old female emerging from the forest and bowing their heads down by the riverbank to drink.

Unkar’s signature of two small and one large triangle was cut in the female’s ear, showing that she had strayed off from his herd and possibly given birth in the wild, as the male’s ears were untouched.

She let them finish drinking before approaching them. She started by singing softly. The song kept them calm as she walked up to them and calmly extended her hand to stroke the soft grey fur. It slightly tinted to brownish orange towards their noses – a rare shade, which further went to show that they were most probably akin.

“Your horn is bent”, she told the male. “Unkar won't like it. Go back to the wild and let me just take your mom.”

But the young reindeer would not listen. When Rey clasped a loose leash around the female’s neck and set off with her through the woods, he persistently followed them.

It took her two more days to reach the village. On the way, to her relief, she stumbled upon a few goldeneye nests. From each one, she took half of the eggs and cracked little holes on the shells so that she could suck out the insides. It tasted like a feast after days of starving.

Once she reached Niima, she took Unkar’s old female straight to him, the young male still following.

“She is worth… mm… one quarter portion.” Unkar examined her fur that had become a bit shabby over the years in the wild.

“Last one was half”, Rey protested.

“I’ll pay half for both of them, if you bite him up first. His horn is bent. I don’t want him to mess with my females.”

Rey felt like she possibly hated Unkar today more than ever. She turned to the young reindeer behind her and stroked its orange-tinted nose.

“You see, this is why I told you to leave when you had a chance. But don’t worry, it will be over quickly and then you’ll be with the herd.”

Unkar took a hold of him with his large arms and casted a side-eyed glance at Rey, signalling her to hurry up. She bent down to the reindeer’s crotch and held the penis up against its belly with her hand, so that she could fit the testicles in her mouth. Then she bit hard.

The sperm ducts ruptured with a disgusting snap. Blood surged inside Rey’s mouth and around the poor animal’s lower belly and legs. It let out a loud wail and tried to move but Unkar held it steady. Rey let go and was still spitting blood out of her mouth, when Unkar hastily pressed in her hand half a portion of salted and dried reindeer meat and hurried to take the reindeer away to join his giant herd.

Rey staggered to the well to drink and wash her face and mouth. The taste of blood was still not fully gone when somebody shook her shoulder form behind. She turned around to see Finn.

“Rey, quickly, it’s Mr. Solo!” he urged.

“What?”

“In the forest, close to the marsh, I saw him fall down, holding his heart.”

Rey grew serious, realising that every second would count. She forgot about the remaining blood in her mouth and ran towards the forest, letting Finn show her the way.

They found him still on the ground, breathing only in shallow gasps, grey hair muddy and right hand clasping the left side of his chest.

“Han, I’m here, just hold on a moment, it will be alright, it will be alright”, she tried to steady both him and herself, as she browsed through the little herb containers in her bag. Just when she had found the one with valerian root and was about to open it, large hands lifted her and threw her down on her back. Somebody else had followed them.

“You’re not touching him.”

The voice came from high above Rey. A black clad figure towered over her. Dark eyes looked sternly at her from under black hair that was falling over them. He had to be somebody visiting from town, as nobody in Niima could get their hands on black fabric.

Rey decided that Han’s life was more important than anything about this stranger and tried to ignore him, just stand up and push past him, but he still gripped her shoulders to stop her.

“Who are you to stop me?” she screamed. “Mr. Solo can die any moment now!”

“His my father, and I decide what is done to him or not.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. If it’s the will of God that he leaves today, we must accept it and not interfere.”

“It’s the will of every god in this place that I can save him!”

Rey tried to fight him with everything she had - kicks, blows, still bloody teeth - but he kept resisting. She had got a hold of both his wrists and was trying to push him to the side when she heard Finn shout from the ground next to Han:

“Rey, we lost him!”

She let go of the stranger’s wrists and just screamed at him with tear-filled eyes:

“You’re a monster!”

“No, you are. You would have healed him with witchcraft. Just for the attempt, I could take you to trial right now.”

“So is that why you’re back? You’re Ben, right? Han told everybody that his son had moved to town for good.”

“I’m not Ben Solo anymore. But yes, I did move to town to study and work for the church. I’m back for an assignment to make sure that every witch in Lapland gets their appropriate sentence, including you, as soon as I find the necessary evidence.”

“Rey is not a witch”, Finn defended.

“Quiet!” he shouted, punched Finn to the ground and grabbed Rey’s shoulders again so that she could not run to him.

When he held her this close and she lifted her defiant look up to his eyes, he saw it. He tried to stop seeing, prayed silently for it to go away, but it did not. It was the work of the curse his mother had carried and passed to him. The curse that the villagers in Niima had called a gift, but that he now understood to be pure wicked darkness, devil’s work in his bloodline.

There was nothing he could do to suppress it. He saw through to everything in this young woman’s mind: her recent memories from the trek to scavenging stray reindeer, her hatred for the herder she worked for, her pain of growing up without parents and love for the villagers like Han Solo and Finn who had become like family to her.

And he saw that she definitely was a total witch. Her mind was full of knowledge of herbs, spells, hand-on healing and rituals, as well as memories of when she had used them to help the villagers. She had healed diseases and wounds, made death easy for those who could not be saved, helped with childbirths, assisted those who had a secret love interest to seduce.

Looking further back, he saw how it all had started. His own mother had trained Rey herself and they had worked together until she died. That explained why so many of the spells in her mind were so familiar to him, even though he had tried his best to forget every word. Still, he was ashamed of how often they kept coming back to his head. Especially at nights, letting his mother’s voice inside his head, singing her [sleep chant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn5M0RFeB8U), was sometimes the only thing that could get him to fall asleep.

Seeing all this in Rey’s mind gave him all the evidence he needed. But ironically, he could not tell anybody about how he attained it because that would prove that he should belong to the same trials himself.

From the way Rey looked back at him, he knew that she could see through to his mind the same way. Aloud she said:

“You… you’re afraid. You’re the same as me and you’re afraid of it.”

“No, there’s a difference. I’m like you but I’ve learned to control it. I’ve turned to the light. You can learn it, too. It’s not too late. You just need a teacher. I can show you the way of God.”

“Which god?”

“The only God. The God who is the true light.”

“I’ll show you the true light.”

She lifted her hand up towards the sky and gathered up a grey swirling mass of thunderclouds. With a gesture of her finger, she invited a blue-tinted lightning to strike down towards him.

It threw him down on his back and passed over the right side of his face, burning a scar on the skin where it touched. Then it continued its way down his shoulder to the ground. The ground shattered in two between them, leaving him and the marsh on the other side and Rey and Finn on the other one with Han's body. After one last defiant look over the crevasse, she helped Finn up and they carried Han’s body back to the village to start preparing for a proper funeral.

But that was not the last time they met. A word went quickly around Niima that Ben Solo had returned but with a different name, this time as Kylo Ren who set up a cluster of tents almost the size of another village outside Niima. Priests and servants were always moving around there, and over the course of the rest of the spring and summer, they learned to fear the black tents, especially the large one that was set up for rigorous interrogations and trials.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can listen to what I imagine to be Leia's sleep chant [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn5M0RFeB8U) and see the translation [here](https://lyricstranslate.com/en/syd%C3%A4meni-laulu-my-hearts-song.html).
> 
> It's from the point of view of a poor mother who knows she cannot feed her child and wishes for him/her a peaceful death during sleep instead of starvation. But it can be a general lullaby regardless of the references to death. And I like imagining Leia singing this, as she also has her fears of not being able to protect her child.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey’s eyes were still swollen but she felt a certain relief. She had had the chance to cry her heart out at Han’s funeral and that had soothed the edge of the pain. She was back at her tent now and her mind was free for other things again.

If Kylo Ren was going to keep his watch over the village this sharp, Han Solo would not remain the last person he would stop her from saving. That thought made Rey feel utterly powerless.

Leia had only taught her how to heal, not how to fight for the possibility to heal. Surely, the thought of that kind of skill to ever be needed would have seemed absurd to her. She had always been respected as the wisest and most powerful person in Niima, whom everyone relied on.

The idea of prosecuting Leia would have come to nobody’s mind. Not when almost everyone in the village owed their lives to her. Even most of those, who had never been dangerously sick and saved by her, had still been born to her caring hands – sometimes just open, receiving and encouraging hands, sometimes a determined hand that made its way in through the red warm flesh to pull out a baby who was too reluctant to being born.

Desiring for some form of advice now, Rey rinsed her face and started to smudge her tent with birch smoke. She took out the drum that Leia had left her and smudged it from both sides until she could feel the leather cleaning up from energetic clutter and restoring as an access point to the other side that she needed. After throwing the smoking chip into the fire in the middle of the tent, she sat down beside it, closed her eyes and started to drum a steady rhythm.

The drum always took her to the same place, on a swamp, with shades of orange and red almost as far as the eye could see, a cluster of small mountains looming on the other side and the edge of a forest on the other. Few crooked trees grew sprinkled around the wet landscape. She had never seen exactly this kind of swamp in real life.

She always stood in the swamp eye or near it but never sank. Her feet did not even get wet. And here, she always met whom she was meant to meet at the moment, sometimes Leia, sometimes other witches, sometimes an animal god, sometimes a copy of herself or several of them, sometimes just a presence without form.

She had already learned that she had no control over it. A dozen times she had tried to ask the drum to show her her own parents, but it had never bent to her will. And now she saw somebody she would never have expected to meet here.

Kylo Ren was standing by the edge of her swamp eye.

“Do you see the same surroundings?” he asked. “The mountains? The forest? The triangle-shaped birch over there?”

He pointed at the directions where they saw these. Now that he was not fighting against his father’s life, he looked at Rey with a soft expression, like he was just a normal person with a curious mind and, she had to admit now, gorgeous features. But she squinted her eyes and refused to answer.

“Where are you?”

His question made Rey panic. Was he going to use this as evidence and come to take her to trial right now? She reached back for her drum in her tent and started tapping the return pattern.

She was out of breath when she returned to her tent. She ate a few bites of reindeer meat with roots of fern and marsh trefoil, all the time eyeing at the tent entrance. Afterwards, she went to sleep with an axe next to her, but nobody came in the whole night.

In a few days it happened again, this time without the drum. Rey was collecting herbs when the forest around her faded and turned into the red-orange swamp. And he was there again in front of her.

She still refused to speak, just stared at him again with the same eyes that were ready to kill him at the first chance. He first opened his mouth as if to say something, but her expression made him close it again. They just waited in silence until eventually the swamp vanished and they were back to their own surroundings each.

The same continued throughout the summer, sometimes every few days, sometimes with longer breaks in between. Whenever Rey saw a glimpse of Kylo in Niima, she always avoided him, which was easy because his tall black figure stood out obviously from afar. Also, she spent a lot of time out of the village for scavenging reindeer and herbs.

But every once in a while, some force drew them back to the swamp on the other side. It did not always take long. They might just stare at each other for seconds before being brought back to their own surroundings again. Sometimes it took longer, and in those cases they would often speak a little.

Rey mostly focused on telling him in different ways how much she hated him. Kylo made new attempts to approach the subject of God. He kept telling her that he saw that there was good in her and that he was sure that she, too, would eventually turn to the light.

It started to sound like he was getting more interested in turning her rather than finding the evidence needed to prosecute and sentence her. That made Rey puzzled, almost making her consider if there was good in _him_ after all. But she remained doubtful.

The leaves were already catching their autumn colours when Rey arrived again at Jakku river, looking for another stray reindeer that Unkar suspected might wander around the area. Knowing that she might have to wait for several days again, she set up a camp by the riverbank and lit up a fire.

While waiting for water to boil, she undressed and stepped into the river. She squatted down, letting the cold water embrace her and blew a stream of air from her mouth on the surface in order to drive the evil spirits away. When sensing that the water was safe, she dived in and swam upstream.

Jakku had a swift flow, so she could just float in it to make her way back to her fire. But as she reached the brink where she had started and set her foot on it to rise up, she was not rising from the river anymore but from a swamp eye, all her surroundings turning orange and red.

Kylo was looking away from her. Probably he had also been doing something else before being pulled here.

“I’d rather not do this now”, he said.

“Yeah, me too”, she responded.

Water was dripping down her bare skin. Her wet hair was glued around her head and neck, sending down trickles that passed around her dark red nipples that were contracted and perked up from the cold. Kylo turned to look at her and right away dropped his flustered gaze down.

“Do you have something, a cowl or something you could put on?”

Rey ignored his question and took a step forward. She had something she had been wanting to ask him, something she wanted to understand.

“Why did you hate your father?”

“I didn’t hate him.”

“Then why did you let him die? I don't understand.” The familiar hostility was creeping into her voice.

“No? Your parents threw you away like garbage."

"They didn't."

"They did. It's time to let the past die if it’s the will of God. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.”

“What god wills for good people to die when they don’t have to?”

She wanted to drown him into the swamp. But since their feet did not even sink in it, that was not an option. Remembering that her body was still standing by the riverbank, she backed away a couple of steps until her feet were again in the water. Then she reached down with her hands, scooped as much cold water as she could and cast it at him. He took cover a bit too late after the splash hit his face.

Before Rey could see his reaction, she was back at Jakku river next to her fire. She dressed up and sat down, trying to keep herself warm by staying close to the fire and sipping heather tea as she ate cloudberries she had picked on the way. She watched a starry sky light up above her and listened to the gentle sounds of approaching night in the forest. For some reason, she felt more alone than ever.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: home-made abortion is described in detail in this chapter

Rey arrived back to Niima with Unkar’s reindeer that happened to be in excellent condition but still only worth of a quarter portion. She let go of her desire to argument when Rose appeared by her side and pulled on her sleeve.

Rose was another orphan from Niima and like a little sister to Rey. Her parents had drowned in a fishing boat when she was only three and her sister still a baby. From then onwards, they had been raised just like Rey, more or less collectively by the villagers.

Rey took her quarter portion from Unkar and followed Rose towards her tent. Rose started to explain in a hushed voice already on the way:

“It’s my sister. She was raped by one of the priests who moved in with Kylo Ren. And several times throughout the summer, even though she didn’t dare to tell me anything, until now that we found out that she’s pregnant.”

“Who does that to a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“They do, apparently.” Rose’s eyes filled with tears of rage. “She’s way too young to be a mother, and all by herself, especially now, knowing what they have started to do to women with children on their own. She hasn’t done anything to deserve to be shut out like that. Will you help us, Rey?”

They reached the tent and stepped in. After her eyes got used to the darkness, Rey saw Paige’s face in the firelight. She had also been crying and Rey dived straight to hug her and stroke her head and back.

“Paige, I’m so sorry, Rose told me everything. Do you want this baby?”

Paige shook her head.

“Then I’ll help you.”

Rey took a deep breath before starting. She had never done this before, though Leia had explained it to her in theory. She put first a large pot of water to the boil and started to scavenge around the tent for suitable tools.

There was nothing perfect, but she reckoned that pliers and a piece of a metal fish trap would do. She cut off one curved metal strand from the trap, straightened it and twisted the other end into a small hook.

Rose spent a long time washing the hook and pliers first with water and then with fire, while Rey brewed several teas with different herbs. When she was ready, she had Paige drink a cup of raspberry leaf brew and lay down on a towel with a bunch of mosses under it to soak up the blood, which they were expecting in abundance.

Rey made several trials of pouring a numbing willow bark brew inside Paige’s vagina. Seeing how difficult it was in practice, she decided that modesty was not necessary and opted for soaking her fingers in the brew and using them so spread as much of it inside as she could, while chanting a numbing spell.

She tested by scratching her flesh. Paige could still feel it but not intensely, so Rey deemed that she could be ready. Rose stretched her open with the pliers so that Rey could fit the hook in.

“Now easy, Paige, the less you move the less it will hurt.”

Rey went on to sing Leia’s [sleep chant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn5M0RFeB8U) to calm her down. Paige still wailed, but kept calm enough that Rey could find her way into the womb and search around until she felt something attach in the hook. With a steady hand, she slowly pulled backwards. The raspberry leaf brew had done its work and caused Paige’s own tissues to slightly contract and help with pushing out the small bundle Rey was dragging. Paige was now biting her forearm and screaming into it.

“Just a little bit more. You’ve got this”, Rey said to all of them.

Finally, she got everything out on the towel, and they did not know whether to cry or throw up. In the middle of a pool of blood was a tiny version of a human being, only about the size of a finger but little arms, legs and head with nose and ears already visible. For a while, all they could do was just stare.

Rey pulled herself together first. She washed Paige with nettle leaf brew and made her drink one with plantain, while she held her hand on her lower belly and mumbled a spell for stopping the bleeding. When she felt it taking effect and figured out that Paige was safe, she said slowly:

“We should bury it. It was not its fault to be conceived this way.”

And they went out behind the tent for a quiet ceremony that the falling night covered in secrecy. Still, they were worried about venturing to the lake to wash the towel, as that amount of blood would for sure catch the attention of anyone who would happen to be around there, which sometimes occurred even at this hour.

In the end, Paige insisted that she would go alone and take the risk by herself. Also, it felt for her as an additional chance to say goodbye to the baby she had lost and wished to still have another later time, with somebody who would be actually willing to stick around with her and care.

The water by the shore stained dark red when she soaked in the towel and dropped in some more tears. But she never got a chance to pick it up. Large hands grasped her shoulders and pulled her up. When she turned her head, she saw Kylo Ren, accompanied by the priest she knew way too intimately.

They lifted her into a horse cart and drove to the large black tent.

A few days later, whole Niima was invited to Paige Tico’s trial. Rose screamed when she just walked into the tent and saw her. Paige’s black hair had all been cut off and she was covered in cuts and bruises.

In the trial, she was peaceful, answering the questions with her head held high. She was accused of a murder of an unborn child, which she confessed. But when she was asked about who helped her, she kept to the same answer she had stuck to even under torture: that she had done it all by herself. The judge interpreted that as a proof that she had used witchcraft and sentenced her to death by burning at the stake. That Rey could not listen but raised her voice to confess:

“I helped her! I did it all! Miss Tico is not a witch. Let her go and take me.”

The judge looked at Kylo Ren who stood up with slight reluctance.

“So you confess using witchcraft to murder an innocent unborn child?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“In that case, we will deal with your case after Paige Tico’s sentence”, Kylo said coldly but clearly with some effort, not taking his eyes off Rey.

“But the sentence! You have to cancel it. She has done nothing. Except for being raped by one of your priests.”

Rey’s voice was starting to shake and she kept looking back and forth between Kylo and the judge. In his elevated chair and golden robes, he seemed even more out of place among the villagers than Kylo Ren.

The crowd gave an angry grunt, which the judge seemed to ignore. He leaned his elbow against his armrest, tilted his head with cruel casualness and concluded:

“She has confessed the murder and consented to using witchcraft to commit it.”

The following days, Rey was kept in a makeshift jail in one of the smaller black tents, tied up in a large log. But when Paige’s execution was due, she requested she could go to see it, as she guessed that Rose could not take it without her. Kylo gave in and took her there with her hands tied to the horse cart. As she demanded, he parked right in front of the stake so that Rose could stand next to Rey and Paige would see them as long as she could look.

They stood there with their heads high, not giving into their own pain but focused on passing her their final bits of love while they still had a chance. When she was tied to the stake and the fire was lit, Rey started to chant Leia’s [sleep chant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn5M0RFeB8U), softly but loud enough to surpass the cracking of the firewood. Paige closed her eyes as the flames swallowed her.

Rose cried against Rey’s shoulder until there was only smoke left of the fire. Rey wondered how Kylo had left her stay here for this long. He did not seem like a person who would have a heart for purposefully allowing time for things like soothing a friend. But when she looked around, she noticed he had left the cart and was just now returning from the forest.

When he passed close by her to say that it was time to go and climbed onto the cart himself, Rey was astounded at how his face and eyes looked. If he was anybody else than Kylo Ren, she could have sworn that he had been crying.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day, Kylo came again to detach Rey from the log to take her to her interrogation.

“You don’t have to do this”, she said when he started to push her out and towards the larger tent. He did not stop but slowed down their pace a little.

“I wouldn’t if you’d have listened when I gave you every chance to regret and turn.”

Rey was walking by herself but he still kept a hand on her back as a gesture of pushing her, and she noticed herself instinctively slowing down her pace even more so that she could feel more of it. His warm palm covered the whole space between her shoulder blades, and as they approached their destination, she could feel it slightly shaking and almost clutching her.

At that moment, when Rey should have feared for her life, suddenly all she could think about was his hand and how much she wanted to feel it everywhere on her skin. They were already by the doors of the tent when she stopped and turned to face him, and he did not oppose.

“Have you considered the possibility that you would be the one to turn?” she asked.

When they had openly browsed each other’s minds, she had seen how torn he was between the legacy and gifts he had inherited from his mother and the new religion he had taken up that condemned all of it. And now she did not have to look any deeper, as she saw the same torment right on his face.

She lifted her bound hands, aiming to touch his cheeks, when the fabric of the tent entrance was pulled aside from inside. The servant holding it looked puzzled, as this was not Kylo’s normal way of bringing suspects in. Kylo quickly turned away from Rey and pushed her inside.

Himself, he stayed outside by the entrance to wait. He had made it clear that he did not want anything to do with the actual interrogations. He had explained that he did not find himself as proficient as the judge and the priests, though in reality, he was afraid that if he would get too close to any suspect, her mind would open to him and he would see more than he could explain without exposing his nature, which he wanted to bury deep with his past.

Through the fabrics of the tent, he could hear how Rey answered the questions. She was first asked about killing Paige Tico’s baby, which she confessed and openly disclosed her methods. But when they started to question her about the names of other people she had helped with witchcraft, she turned silent and refused to say anything. Soon after, Kylo heard the worst sound he had ever experienced: Rey screaming in pain.

He had heard a lot of similar screams. Niima was not even his first assignment in this work. But this one was different. This sound pierced his heart. He tried to pray for strength to surrender to God’s will and justice, but all he could think of was how to make Rey stop screaming. Rey, who should be free and happy.

He had not seen her smile many times, as he had wasted so much time making her angry with him. But sometimes, when they had met at the swamp, right at a moment when she had been experiencing something pleasant elsewhere, a smile had first lingered on her face, before she had realised where she was and turned back to her normal expression devoted to Kylo Ren. But those brief smiles on Rey’s face were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

There were only brief pauses in the screaming. And every time it started again, it sounded louder. He felt something in his hands that he had not felt since the early days after leaving Niima, before he had learned to suppress it. Now it seemed that everything he had learned was vanishing in the air. All that was left was the raw power from around, below and above him, gathering up in his belly and channelling into his hands, urging him to do something to save her.

When Rey started again and louder, Kylo stopped hesitating and went inside. Right from the entrance, he held out his already itching hand towards the judge, who was holding Rey’s bleeding foot. He let his hand extend as invisible chords through the air until he reached his throat and pinched.

His hands let go of Rey’s foot and his knife and reached for his throat instead, terrified about what invisible force was stopping him from breathing. He never found that out before Kylo let go and his dead body fell on the ground.

Rey only wasted a few seconds being amazed. She was quickly up on her feet, noticed that she could still walk and closed the distance to Kylo. Her hands were unbound now and she already held one up while walking. Before anybody had time to follow them, she had gathered a swirl of thunderclouds above the tent and let a bunch of lightnings strike down right when they stepped out.

Aftershocks of blue-tinted lightning were still twitching crushed bodies under the collapsed tent, when Kylo gestured with his head towards his horse cart.

“Let’s go”, he said.

“Where?”

“To town. You just saw what we can do together. We can take them all down and rule the whole Lapland. These people just mind their reindeer and fishing in poverty, but people like us could bring a new order here, build a real empire.”

“Please, don't go this way.”

“What? Are you still holding on to… that?” He gestured his hand towards Niima. “Do you want to know why your parents left you? My parents knew them, but did they ever tell you? You’ve still always known the truth, right? You've just hidden it away. Say it now. Say it."

“They… sold me.” Saying it aloud sent tears down Rey’s cheeks.

“They sold you to Unkar to move to town for a more exciting life. But once they got there, they drank all the money and died. See, you have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You're nothing. But not to me. Join me. Please.”

Kylo held out his hand to Rey and she started to move hers to take it. But she left it dangling in the air, still hesitating. In the end, she pulled it back and shook her head.

“What are you afraid of?” Kylo asked, on the verge of tears himself. “Just take my hand and we’ll finish this together. Rey, I… I really want you by my side.”

“There’s something else I’d rather take”, Rey finally said slowly.

“What is it?”

“Ben’s hand.”

“Ben Solo’s? Really?”

Rey nodded.

“But… I don’t understand… What do you see in _him_? He was weak, full of dark powers he didn’t even try to hold back. That's why I destroyed him.”

“I saw everything about him when we looked into each other’s minds. He has incredible gifts in healing and seeing. And a kind and strong heart that guides him to use those gifts for good. He's still in you, and you're torn apart.”

“But it’s dark. It’s wrong.” A tear trickled down his cheek, then another.

“No, not dark, not wrong”, she said softly. “You're still holding on. Let go. I’ll help you.”

She offered him her hand and after a deep breath, he took it.

They were about to turn towards the cart again, when they noticed that those servants who had not been inside the tent had gathered around, curious about what had happened.

“You can go home. Our job is done here”, Ben told everyone.

“But what about the archbishop?” one of them asked.

“Report to him that there are no more witches in Niima.”

“What was it then that just made the lightnings strike on the tent?”

“It’s natural, sometimes lightnings strike on tents. It’s up to God’s will where.”

The servants still looked suspicious but Ben did not bother explaining more. He climbed on the horse cart with Rey and they drove off towards Niima.


	5. Chapter 5

Rey rushed to tidy up her tent when they stepped in. When she left for Paige’s trial, she had not expected to return only after several days and with her worst enemy at the time. Her tiny amount of property lay scattered around the ground. The fire had gone out so they needed to fold the entrance open to see anything.

Rey’s hustling made Ben smile and when she noticed it, she had to stop for a moment just to take in the sight. It made her grin briefly herself before she got back to work on lighting the fire again. The days without it had left the tent cold and they stayed as covered up in furs as possible, when Ben tended to the worst bruises and cuts on Rey’s face, arms and feet.

He was clumsy with hands-on healing first, since he had never practiced using that gift he had always had. But she helped him get started, and soon he was channelling healing energy fluently. He wanted to fix every mark on her skin that made him think about the judge who caused them and whom he wanted to kill again for that. But she insisted on keeping some scars as signs of victory.

Rey found salted and dried reindeer meat and a selection of roots for them to eat. It was less than Ben was used to, but eating with Rey made up for a lot. The person she was with Ben Solo was very different from who she had been with Kylo Ren. Now she chattered, smiled and laughed almost incessantly, bright hazel eyes shining at him in the firelight.

When the heat of the fire started to kick in, she shook off her top layer of fur. She was still wearing several layers of shirts and skirts, but just the act of shedding one off pulled Ben's mind to what he had once seen to be under all of them. Frightened by the thought, he wrapped the fur tighter around him, even though it was getting increasingly hot under it.

“Aren’t you hot?” she asked casually. “Your ears seem red… Are you sick?”

She leaned towards him to lay the back of her hand on his forehead. The worried look relaxed from her face, as she did not feel the fever she was afraid of. But the touch made her curious and she left her hand on his face, turning the palm towards his skin. She covered first his right eye and focused on channelling energy that slowly worked its way into closing the scar she had cut there with the lightning.

She smiled at her result and stroked the smoothened skin on his forehead and cheek. His cheek felt just as soft as she had imagined when reaching for it in front of the interrogation tent. And here she could feel some heat, but still something assured her that it was not from fever. She went on with her hand backwards through his hair and around his ear, then down to his neck.

“You’re sweating here. Are you sure you don’t want this off?”

She pulled slightly the edge of the fur around him. He did not say anything but let her unwind it without resistance. For a while, they sat in the increasing warmth by the fire, hand in hand, Rey eating with her eyes every feature in Ben, who dared to look at her only in short bursts.

Over time, her attention got drawn again and again to his lips, taking in their shape and lushness. After making enough guesses about how they would feel like, she held out a hand again on his chin and brushed her thumb across his lower lip.

It felt soft and luscious as it responded to her finger’s trajectory, but she found Ben’s reaction even more intriguing. He breathed in sharply, closed his eyes and let out a long exhalation with a subtle sound. Clearly, this was something his lifestyle had kept him deprived off, and Rey could say the same about her own.

She moved closer, brought her face all the way up to his and enclosed her own lips around his lower one. He shivered but did not push her away. She used her upper lip to nudge his mouth more open so that she could fit her lips against both of his and her tongue in his mouth to feel and taste it from the inside. Then she stopped and backed away slightly to observe the effect. Ben stared at her, eyes wide of wonder, only able to say:

“More.”

With a satisfied smile, she leaned back in to kiss him more. She lifted a hand to his hair, partly to tilt his head for better access, partly to just luxuriate in the softness of his black waves. Then she left her hand travel down his neck and chest that was still covered in an assembly of shirts she was dying to get rid of, then downwards across his belly.

“Rey, what are you doing?”

“Just scavenging… And I think I found something.”

Her hand had reached the middle of his lower belly, where she found him as hard as she had wished. She started to undress them both with determined moves. It made him tense up but still not resist.

Once she had them both naked, she took a long while just to look at him before getting back to touching everything she had only been imagining through his clothes. She left a hand on his erection and turned her face towards his again.

“So tell me, what kind of touch do you like here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like when you touch yourself or when somebody has touched you here, what do you like?”

“Errr… I don’t know… I’ve never… you know…”

“Never done this with anyone? Or… Never touched yourself?”

“Neither.”

“What!?”

“Well, it was forbidden in my school.”

“You’ve been in a wicked school. Why did you even obey? Nobody would have seen what you’d do in your bed or in the forest.”

“I was told that God would see.”

“And didn’t it occur to you that God might _like_ what He would see?”

Ben shrugged. Rey smiled a little when remembering Leia’s teaching about how orgasms were humans’ communication with the gods, just like drumming or chanting. She wondered how Leia would react if she would hear what her own son had been led to believe. Most probably, she would be furious. In her mind, Rey sent Leia’s spirit a quiet affirmation: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix it’. Aloud she said:

“Well, doesn’t matter now. We just have to find it out.”

This was one of the things that Leia had only explained to Rey in theory, and she had practiced with wooden sticks. Still, she remembered several moves that were known to typically bring pleasure, and she set out to trying out those along with others she invented in the moment. When she had formed a picture of Ben's favourite touches from her hand, she dived in with her tongue, then with her whole mouth.

“Tell me how it feels”, she paused to ask.

“It’s amazing, Rey. Emmm… Have you… done this before?”

“Not to humans, and not for pleasure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only to reindeer, to bite through their sperm ducts.”

As her explanation made him tense up, she added:

“Don’t worry. I still want a big family with you.”

And she took him again gently deep in her mouth. She continued until he was moaning and squirming. When she stopped, he looked at her with pleading eyes and mumbled:

“Don’t stop, please.”

“Some day…” she started, observing the effect before finishing: “…I’ll make you come like this. But today I want you inside me.”

“What are you thinking, Rey? We’re not married. What if something happens?”

“What could happen?”

“You could… get… pregnant, or something.”

“If that concerns you, I know exactly which herb to take afterwards.”

“Are you sure?”

His voice still carried worries about a multitude things that could go wrong, but a hopeful edge had crept into it. And the sight of Rey’s naked body now leaning all the way over his own, as she was placing her knees around his hips, made him want to believe any kind of reasoning that this could all be ok. She nodded her head as she guided him inside her.

The way how her muscles contracted and moved around his length felt like out of this world. He had to laugh out of joy, and then cry. Then he relaxed into it, caressing every feature of her body, until she threw her head back with a loud moan and squeezed around him involuntarily, sucking him over the edge. A warm fluid wetted his hips and she collapsed onto him, both of their bodies still occasionally shuddering in aftershocks.

After a blissful moment, she rolled over and reached for the herb selection in her bag.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for major character death in this chapter, roughly like in TROS, but not quite, and the ending will be more hopeful, at least in my opinion :)
> 
> This last chapter is a bit longer, too... Thanks for reading so far!

When Ben woke up the next morning, Rey was gone. At some point at night, they had shifted to sleep between dry reindeer pelts. The fire had been recently tended, and the air was rather warm inside the tent, though not as warm as under the covers.

Memories from last night conquered his mind and made him long for Rey’s touch again, so much that it hurt. Then he remembered what Rey had said: maybe God, perhaps all the gods he knew from his childhood, would want him to do the same to himself sometimes.

He sneaked his warm hand from under the covers to stroke his hair first, then moving down to his neck and shoulder, where the skin felt supple around the hard muscles. Imagining Rey’s hand and mouth, he caressed and squeezed the skin along his arm and chest.

He passed his hand between his legs but continued into a teasing touch on his inner thighs and up to his hips. There was a point just in front of the hipbone where the contact of his fingers felt intensely arousing. He would need to ask Rey to touch him there, lightly with her small and tender fingers.

Actually, there were a lot of things he would need to ask Rey. He wanted to ask her to teach him everything about touching her. He wanted to see her as crazy for his touch as he was for hers.

Just imagining it made his cock twitch in anticipation. He moved his hand onto it, stroking and swirling first with one finger, then with several. Finally, he squeezed his whole hand around it, just like Rey’s pussy had done last night. Mimicking similar sensations and remembering how it had looked, smelled and sounded, he went again off the edge into a sweet oblivious feeling that smudged the pelt and his belly with thick cum.

This had happened to him several times at school in his sleep, and afterwards, when the caretakers discovered the dirty sheets, he had always been hit, no matter how much he had tried to explain that he had done nothing. For a few years, it had been part of his evening prayer that God would let him stay dry that night.

Thinking about it now, maybe it had been His attempt for conversation that he had been blocking out. Here in Rey’s tent, there was finally a freedom to reach out to Him or any others who would show up through this channel.

When Ben drifted back down to his senses and opened his eyes, he was back on the red-orange swamp, this time by himself. He searched around the tent ground that he could still feel with his hands, found his cowl, wrapped it around himself and stood up.

Somebody was approaching from the direction of the mountains, clad in a white dress. Once he recognised who it was, tears started streaming from his eyes.

“Mom, I’m sorry…” he started.

She did not say anything, just opened her arms. He closed the distance between them and relaxed into a hug, resting his chin on her head. He could only feel the shape of her, no warmth, no other qualities of a real-life body, and the tears he shed on her head did not wet her hair. But he could feel the love and the forgiveness that was already there, even before he started speaking about everything that had been weighing on his heart:

“I knew you were sick. And I sensed it was the end. But I didn’t come to say goodbye. Didn’t even send anything. I was too ashamed. And Dad… I stopped Rey from saving him. I really thought it was the right thing to do. Now neither of you is ever coming back. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all forgiven, dearest Ben. And you’ll find me here whenever you need me. Just like now, when there’s something you need to know.”

She broke the hug and showed him a vision of what was about to happen. The swamp turned into the lake next to Niima, frozen and covered in snow. Archbishop Palpatine was making his way over it in a sledge, pulled by black horses and accompanied by a group of black clad knights. He was coming to Niima himself, to finish what Kylo Ren had started.

“I’ll show you a sign the night before”, Leia said after the vision faded. “You’ll see the sky full of purple aurora. Take care of yourself and Rey and the people of Niima.”

She grinned and shuffled Ben’s hair like she used to do when he was little. Just now she needed to rise up on her toes to reach for it. Ben was still smiling when he drifted back to Rey’s tent.

Right then, Rey’s head peeked back in. She had foraged roots, leaves and berries for breakfast and carried a large pot of water from the well. Seeing the disorder in Ben’s hair inspired her to also reach up and shuffle it more while planting a kiss on his lips.

While eating, he told her about the vision his mother had shown him on the swamp. Rey’s first reaction was to ask how he got there. When he told her how, she smiled with delight, but grew more serious again when thinking about the archbishop more closely.

“Did you say you saw him arrive over the lake?”

Ben nodded and she relaxed.

“It will take at least a couple of months for the water to freeze. We’ll take care of him then.”

Just like she suggested, they spent the rest of the autumn without worrying about the archbishop. That gave Rey plenty of time to teach Ben all he wanted to know about her body and a bit about getting in touch with his gifts, though he did not need a lot of teaching once he allowed the gate to flood open.

And Ben’s savings and rations provided for a welcome addition to the food available for them. In his black tent, he had kept a stock of rye flour, which was a rare treat for anybody in Niima. They used it to bake bread, which Rey fell in love with.

Blending in with the villagers was first difficult for Ben, as they had learned to hate him as Kylo Ren. But as he started to work on healing with Rey, he started to win hearts over, one by one, when people saw how powerful he was against diseases and how devoted he was now to help.

But eventually, thick snow covered the village and the surrounding wilderness and the lake froze. Rey and Ben kept eyeing the night sky with growing worry, but all the aurora kept their normal green colour for three whole months.

The days were already growing longer when one night, they saw the entire northern sky radiating with gorgeous purple aurora. Whole Niima came out of their tents, gazing at the sky in wonder. Nobody had ever seen aurora in this colour. Only Rey and Ben went to sleep worried, knowing what the following day would bring.

They rose up early, dressed up warm and ate in silence. They were about to head out to the lake when Rey stepped back and squatted down to search for something under the disordered pile where she kept her things. She found two axes and passed one to Ben.

“What are these for?” he asked. “We’ll take them like the others last time, right?”

“A feeling”, she responded, her eyes wandering into distance. “You know, some days you just trust iron more than any other power.”

He partly understood and hung the axe on his belt as they set off for the lake. The day was just as bright as he had seen in the vision, the sun already blazing with a promise of spring. They did not have to wait for long by the lake, until they saw the black horses in front of a large sledge approaching from the other shore.

They stumbled ahead over the snow-covered ice to meet it. In the sky above them, Rey gathered her bundle of thunderclouds and invited lightnings down on the sledge. But the knights were too many and too prepared to be taken by surprise. Only a couple of them got struck and the rest jumped out of the sledge, dodged the lightnings and attacked them with swords.

Ben managed to throw some of them down from distance, just with a forceful gesture of his hand. The rest they fought with fists, kicks and axes. Blood stained the snow with red as the black clad bodies fell on it one by one.

In the end, archbishop Palpatine alone was left. Ben extended his hand towards him to choke him as he had done to the judge. But before the invisible chords extending from his hand had reached his throat, Palpatine held out his own hand.

He turned the chords back towards Ben so that they grasped his collar and threw him in a wide arch over the ice. He fell into a spot where the ice was already thin enough to splinter at the impact. With a splash, he sank into the freezing water.

Rey looked at the archbishop in shock. What he had just done showed that he had the same power himself as the witches whose hunt he had orchestrated around whole Lapland. Now he used the moment of Rey’s bewilderment to reach up to her own thundercloud and bring down a stream of blue lightnings on Rey herself.

The electric shocks put Rey’s body into spasms. She knew she could not last long and gathered her legs into a final reeling sprint towards Palpatine. She forced her twitching hands under the last bits of her control, grasped her axe with both of them, forced it above her and stroke it down in the middle of his head.

They both fell down on the snow-covered ice, archbishop Palpatine with his head split in two and Rey with unseeing eyes staring blankly at the sky.

Ben was sinking further down. His limbs were paralysed by the cold and his soaked clothes kept dragging him towards the lake bottom. Through the water, he could still feel Rey’s presence on top of the ice. It gave him hope that even if this would be his end, she would resist Palpatine and go on living in the happiness she deserved. And for a little while, the past autumn and winter, he had been blessed with the chance to live with her. The hope and gratitude gave him a sense of peace at the moment of facing his death.

Until he could not feel anything about Rey anymore.

Panicked, he knew that he had to get back to the surface, back on the ice to save her. He forced his half-frozen arms and legs to move and kick and paddle himself upwards. He could still see the light through the hole where he had fallen through the ice, and towards that he directed his one-pointed focus. At last, when he was just about to pass out, his head pierced the surface and his mouth opened into a giant gulp for air.

He fought his way to turn towards where he saw the shape of the sledge. With numb arms, he hammered the ice in front of him until he reached a point where he could not break it anymore. Then he gathered all his remaining force to climb on it. After sliding down a few times, he managed to get his leg steadily on it and roll up on his side. He continued rolling to protect the thin ice, then crawling, until he reached Rey.

He was shivering, but the coldness of his body was nothing compared to the coldness that conquered his heart when he saw Rey’s dead body on the snow. He cradled her in his arms and squeezed her against his chest. As a last resort, he placed his hand on her belly and started channelling life back in.

He gave her everything he could gather from the surroundings and from all the gods he knew. And everything from himself. He knew that she would need all of it to be able to live again, but it did not matter to him anymore. If Rey just would live, his own life would have been worth it.

When he sensed that it was done and he was losing it himself, he felt Rey’s hand move to touch his own and saw a light spark up in her eyes again. She looked straight into his eyes and they both smiled. Thus, he got to see the most beautiful sight he knew as the last thing he saw before falling on his back on the snow and letting out his final breath.

Rey stared at his body in devastation and realised what had happened. She remembered she had killed the archbishop and died. And she knew that Ben had been ready to sacrifice himself so that she could still live. But it was way too bitter for her to bear.

The bliss of living with Ben for the past months had been like she was united with a stray part of her soul, like she had finally become what she was meant to be. She could not imagine going back to a life without him anymore. So she decided to lay down next to him, rest her head on his shoulder like she had done so many times in their tent, and follow him.

She found him again on the swamp. When he saw her, he knew right away what she had done. She had not made her way here for a visit through drumming or orgasm, but she had come for good, just to stay with him. He took her hands in his and shook his head.

“Rey, my dearest Rey, why did you do this? I wanted you to live. You had so much more to experience, so much happiness you deserved. And I was so grateful to you for giving me so much in our short time together. I wanted to give you everything in my power.”

“Ben, I... I won’t be parted from you again. Life is not the same anymore without you.”

She dived into his arms for a hug. But it was far from what it had been when they were still in their bodies. Now they could only feel each other’s outlines, not the warmth and life under the skin.

“This is not the same”, Rey said after a while of trying to get used to it, disappointed.

“I know.”

“What do we do?”

“We have to be born again.”

“Ok, let’s see who are now pregnant in Niima, early enough so that the babies are still without a spirit.”

“Are you sure you want to go back to Niima? I mean, we could choose freely. Here we are not restricted by space or time. We could be born somewhere else on the Earth, or…”

They looked at the lands that extended beyond the village and the wilderness around it, even beyond the closest town. The terrain seemed to be going on forever. From here, they could even see that if they would follow a certain direction over all the lands and seas it crossed, they would come back to the same spot. It had never occurred to them that the Earth they had lived their lives on could be a giant round ball.

When they looked even further, they saw how the Earth was moving through a vast emptiness of space and how all the stars they had seen on the sky were other planets and suns. And infinitely in all directions, there were more and more of these planets and suns that formed new star systems and galaxies.

“You’re right”, Rey gasped. “We could be born anywhere, another time, even in another galaxy.”

As they browsed the space and time, Ben’s attention was caught by a couple who was setting up a home on planet Chandrila. They were celebrated heroes of a war that had recently ended and the woman, knowing that she was in early pregnancy, had thrown herself into a campaign for a senator’s position in a new galactic republic, with hopes of securing the position before having to take time off for giving birth. The man seemed rather indifferent about her campaign and more interested in distracting her from it with endless kisses on her mouth and belly.

“They look just like my parents”, Ben said, his eyes lighting up.

“But that’s a long time ago. And that galaxy is far…”

“Far away, yes, but that doesn’t matter. Rey, I think this is my chance. If I go to them now, I get another opportunity to live with them and show them the love I always wanted to show in this lifetime but got distracted.”

“Where do I go then?”

Rey looked at other couples on Chandrila around the same time period, but all seemed somehow too fancy and elitist for her. She would appreciate a more pragmatic home. Also, she saw that parts of Chandrila got cold in the winter, and she had had enough of harsh winters in this lifetime.

“See how they are travelling through space all the time”, Ben said. ”As long as you are in that galaxy and around the same time, I’ll be able to find you.”

“But how?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“No, we won’t. As soon as we are born, we won’t remember anything of this past life. We need to make sure we will be pulled to each other. Let’s go to that galaxy as two people that are one.”

“Like a dyad?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. That could also make us more powerful there.”

And they each loosened a chord in their soul and exchanged them.

Then Ben kissed Rey for the last time, on the shape of her dry mouth that had no taste here. But he knew that it would not take long before he would kiss her again for real. Just another childhood, which he would spend happily with these new parents, this time without breaking their hearts by turning against them, until he would be old enough to find Rey.

Ben’s spirit left Rey on the swamp and dived into the womb of Leia Organa in another galaxy and another time.

For Rey, it still took time to make her decision. The galaxy they had chosen had so many planets that looked fascinating. Her attention wandered further and further, all the way to the outer rim where she saw an enchanting world. The planet was covered in sand and its atmosphere had almost no clouds. The unrestrained heat of the sun wrapped everything in pleasant-looking warmth.

And on that planet, she saw a couple that lived in a small tent a lot like hers. It was only designed for keeping the excess heat out instead of in, which had been her main interest in the past lifetime. They looked so friendly and so in love that she was sure that they would cherish her and provide her a beautiful childhood without abandoning her like her previous parents.

Full of high hopes, her spirit scrolled in time to the right moment of pregnancy and plunged into this woman’s womb.


End file.
